Today, Alabama voters go to the polls for a special election to vote for a new senator, thanks to the vacancy created when Senator Jeff Sessions was appointed Attorney General of the United States.
The Democratic candidate is Doug Jones, a former U.S. attorney who successfully prosecuted the KKK for murdering four young African-American girls in a 1963 church bombing, and secured an indictment against Olympic Park bomber Eric Rudolph.
The Republican candidate is former Alabama Supreme Court judge Roy Moore, a controversial figure who was twice removed from the bench for ethics violations, and who’s facing allegations from eight different women for crimes ranging from sexual assault to child molestation.
As of Sunday night, Moore was ahead 3.8% in Real Clear Politics aggregate polling – closer than a race against a Democrat in Alabama should be, and yet way closer than a race involving an alleged child molester should be.
So the question becomes: how did the Republican Party find itself in the disgraceful position where it may actually elect an accused child molester to the U.S. Senate?
To answer that, let’s flashback to last November, when Republicans made a devil’s bargain to turn a blind eye to credible allegations of sexual misconduct against the man they elected president – Donald Trump.
Like Roy Moore, multiple accusers charged Donald Trump with crimes ranging from sexual harassment to rape – except in Trump’s case, he had double the accusers Moore did: 16 different women as opposed to the 8 women accusing Moore.
To make matters worse, Trump was recorded on tape admitting to the exact behavior his accusers were charging him with, claiming that because he was “a star” he “could do anything” to women, including grabbing them by their genitals.
Yet, Republicans weren’t bothered by accusations from 16 different women offering eyewitness testimony of Trump’s sex crimes, and were unfazed by Trump’s own lurid taped confession of trying to cheat on his wife and feeling entitled to commit sexual assault. When faced with losing the White House, they chose to vote for a self-admitted sexual predator.
Fast-forward to a year later, and Republicans are once again ready to sacrifice their dignity and credibility for the sake of a political win, officially hitting rock bottom by voting for an alleged child molester. Because apparently a single vote in the Senate is now worth the Republican Party losing its soul.
Oh sure, there are plenty of Moore defenders and apologists who insist that “if the allegations are true,” then he’s unfit to serve in the Congress. Trouble is, in order to find Moore innocent, you’d have to believe in a ridiculous conspiracy theory that defies all logic.
See, Republicans believe that Roy Moore is an innocent man being framed by eight different women who are all willing to lie and risk character assassination and death threats for unknown incentives the conspiracy theorists are at a loss to articulate.
It’s also worth noting that the two women accusing Moore of the worst crimes – sexual assault and child molestation – are Republicans and Trump supporters, so the idea that they’re really secret liberals being used as pawns to bring down Moore is patently absurd.
And who’s behind this mysterious plot to destroy an honest, God-fearing man like Moore – a man who charmingly claimed that homosexuality should be illegal, that Obama was “really” born in Africa, that 9/11 may have been an inside job, and that Muslims shouldn’t be able to serve in Congress?
The Great Roy Moore Child Molestation Conspiracy is purportedly the work of evil Democrats coordinating with establishment Republicans, as well as the flying monkeys of the dreaded mainstream media, all of whom cultivated eight random women to lie about Moore being a lecherous creep.
Ask yourself a simple question: can you name one example in U.S. history where a group of women have accused someone of sex crimes, only for it to be revealed as a scam to destroy an innocent man? Not a single scheming woman, but multiple women – all of whom didn’t know one another, and were exposed as colluding and lying about sexual misconduct?
Come up with any examples yet? No? Well, there’s a good reason for that: it doesn’t happen. Ever. Because it’s a crazy lie guilty people hurl out as a “hail mary” attempt to save their butts and defend the indefensible.
The women weren’t lying about Bill Cosby, or Bill O’Reilly, or Harvey Weinstein, or Matt Lauer. The men weren’t lying about Jerry Sandusky, or Dennis Hastert, or Kevin Spacey. The hundreds of people who suffered sexual abuse in the Catholic Church weren’t lying about being victimized by pedophile priests. Multiple accusers don’t lie.
And they’re not lying about Roy Moore either. Moore may very well be elected to the U.S. Senate by the end of today. But if he is, it’s only because Republicans decided that defending an alleged child molester was a small price to pay to win a Senate seat.
Charlie Vignola is a former college Republican turned liberal Democrat. He lives in Fair Oaks Ranch, works in the motion picture industry and loves his wife and kids.
